To Catch A Fascist: An Interview with Christopher Mathias

Summary

Podcast Summary: It Could Happen Here – “To Catch a Fascist: An Interview with Christopher Mathias”

Date: January 29, 2026
Host: Molly Conger
Guest: Christopher Mathias
Podcast Network: Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

This episode features investigative journalist Christopher Mathias discussing his new book To Catch a Fascist: The Fight to Expose the Radical Right with host Molly Conger. The conversation provides a deep dive into the world of anti-fascist (Antifa) activism, particularly the clandestine work of doxxing and infiltrating far-right groups. Through anecdotes, history, and lessons from recent years, Mathias and Conger explore the impact, ethics, and risks of confronting fascist organizations in the U.S.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Genesis and Intent of the Book

• Mathias wrote the book to demystify Antifa for mainstream audiences (“boomer liberals or centrists” [03:52]) and to make radical anti-fascist politics accessible and engaging. He models the book as a “thriller…like a spy narrative” (04:22).
• The approach is intentionally accessible for people unfamiliar or skittish about Antifa tactics, but also rich enough for activists and researchers.

2. Doxxing Nazis: Methods and Impact

• Doxxing (unmasking) members of far-right groups is likened to “investigating your ex’s Instagram account”—a transferable skill many people might unknowingly have ([01:42]).
• The value of leaks (such as Rocket Chat leaks from Patriot Front, provided by the infiltrator “Vincent Washington”) is emphasized for not only exposing members but directly enabling lawsuits (e.g., Klan Act lawsuits, Sines v. Kessler case, etc. [09:19]).
• Anti-fascist leaks have a larger and swifter impact in disrupting fascist organizations than media or law enforcement efforts ([08:24]).

3. The Iconography and Misconceptions of Antifa

• Public perception often stops at “Nazi punching” (e.g., the viral punch to Richard Spencer [09:40]), overshadowing espionage and intelligence gathering, which is the bulk of Antifa’s work ([10:02]).
• Mathias: “Most Americans don’t know that Antifa had so many spies over the last 10 years…They were the hidden hand behind thousands of news stories…” ([07:17])

4. The Social Consequences of Being Outed as a Fascist

• The purpose is less about personal revenge and more about “creating a social cost for being a fascist…leveraging an existing societal taboo against white supremacy to ensure a consequence” ([12:13]).
• Historical parallels are drawn from anti-Klan activism in the 1920s and later, showing the tradition and impact of unmasking hate group members ([14:42]).

5. The Evolution of the Antifa Boogeyman

• The episode chronicles how the right manufactured the notion of Antifa as a nefarious, organized threat—often to shift focus from their own violence or justify repression (e.g., after Charlottesville in 2017, and during the 2020 George Floyd uprisings [26:01], [27:26]).
• The “outside agitator” trope has deep roots, used to undermine legitimate grassroots protest and justify harsh crackdowns ([24:33]).

6. Risks, Retaliation, and State Involvement

• The risks to anti-fascists, up to and including lethal violence (examples cited: murders of anti-racist activists in the ‘90s, recent assassination plots, the FBI's sometimes conflicting role [19:28], [20:25]).
• Anti-fascist activists prioritize community safety over building criminal cases, often stepping in where law enforcement either cannot or chooses not to act ([21:27]).

7. Historical and Modern Case Studies

• Patriot Front Infiltration (“Vincent Washington”): Vincent infiltrated, gathered significant data, and helped expose 80+ members ([08:26]). His physical involvement, trust-earning, and ultimate sabotage are recounted in vivid detail ([41:23]).
• Redbeard Identification: A long-term mystery—identifying a key attacker from the Charlottesville rally—was solved using facial recognition, public records, and digital sleuthing ([46:00]). Mathias details the meticulous process, challenges, and the implications of the find.
• Role of Data and Metadata: The importance and risks of leaving metadata attached to digital evidence, which enabled numerous identifications ([08:24], [54:17]).

8. The Ethos of “We Protect Us”

• The conversation returns repeatedly to the concept that marginalized and targeted communities must organize and defend themselves, as institutional actors often fail to do so ([32:58]).
• “It’s an insurgent form of community self-defense…on very big display right now in Minneapolis” ([34:45]), exemplifying grassroots activism in the absence of official protection.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the accessibility of antifascist research:
  “...you once compared the research that goes into doxxing unmasking Nazis to basically investigating your ex's Instagram account...this type of work is accessible if you've done that type of sleuthing.”
  — Christopher Mathias [01:42]

• On doxxing’s role:
  “The way I always describe it is the digital equivalent of ripping the white hood off of a Klansman.”
  — Christopher Mathias [11:56]

• On Antifa’s real legacy:
  “The viral videos that catapulted that word into the lexicon kind of obscured the bulk of the work that Antifa was doing, which was espionage and intelligence gathering.”
  — Christopher Mathias [10:34]

• On the risks:
  “The stakes are lethal. Yeah, right. Like they will, they will kill you back. These organizations can't survive sunshine. And they're so aware of that that, yeah, people have been killed for this.”
  — Molly Conger [18:11]

• On government vs. Antifa intervention:
  “...we are invested in protecting our communities, not building a case…You're protecting a community.”
  — Molly Conger [21:27]

• On “We Protect Us” in action:
  “There's this axiom that we talk about a lot in anti fascist spaces…of we protect us. And you know, that is on very big display right now in Minneapolis...”
  — Christopher Mathias [32:58]

• On identifying 'Redbeard':
  “Like every fat guy with a red beard on the east coast has been identified as Redbeard.”
  — Molly Conger [49:50]
  — (A lighter moment highlighting the absurd lengths and pitfalls of amateur sleuthing.)

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Important Timestamps and Segments

• [01:06] – Introduction to Chris and his book, premise of the episode
• [04:53] – Audience for book, “threading the needle” for different political backgrounds
• [05:14] – Vincent Washington infiltration case, Patriot Front leaks
• [08:26] – Use of leaked data and metadata, impact on lawsuit and identifications
• [11:33] – Social cost of being exposed, taboo of explicit fascism
• [14:42] – Historical anti-Klan efforts, “unmasking” parallels
• [19:28] – The danger of antifascist work, assassination, government/informant complications
• [21:33] – Differences between FBI/law enforcement and anti-fascist infiltration
• [24:33] – The outside agitator narrative, history and manipulation
• [26:01] – Creation of the Antifa boogeyman, policy implications, propaganda
• [32:58] – “We protect us” and grassroots protection
• [41:23] – Vincent’s physical infiltration, gathering evidence in Patriot Front
• [46:00] – Identification of Redbeard, methodology and breakthrough
• [54:43] – Systemic failures of prosecution, implications for justice
• [55:08–56:42] – Reflections, book promotion, closing thanks

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Conclusion

This episode provides a rich look at the intersection of activism, investigative journalism, and the history of anti-fascist organizing. Molly Conger and Christopher Mathias break down the stakes and tactics of unmasking the far right, illustrate the power of crowdsourced investigation, and highlight both the dangers and the necessity of community self-defense amid rising fascism and state ambivalence. Listeners come away with a deeper understanding of the mechanics, ethics, and lived reality of anti-fascist activism—past and present.

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Further Reading & Action

• To Catch a Fascist by Christopher Mathias (Pre-order from independent, anarchist, or local bookstores)
• Follow Mathias (@letsgomathias) on Bluesky/Socials for updates
• Support trusted community journalism and anti-fascist research

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“You don’t know what [‘We protect us’] means until you feel it…Once you have experienced that kind of community solidarity…once you’ve seen it, you know what it means, and nobody’s going to tell you different.”
— Molly Conger [34:09]

Transcript

[Molly Conger]

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[Molly Conger]

Media. Hello and welcome back to It Could Happen Here. I'm your occasional host, Molly Conger, and today we're going to be talking about something that is happening here. Doxxing Nazis. Specifically, I'm talking to Chris Matthias about his new book, To Catch a the Fight to Expose the Radical right. Chris, thanks for coming on today.

[Christopher Matthias]

Oh my God, Molly, it's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

[Molly Conger]

I'm so excited to talk about this book. You sent me a copy of it recently. I don't think I remembered until I was reading it that I talked to you while you were writing it.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, yes, yes, you did. Yeah. Yeah. You're one of the many, many people I talked to and you are quoted in the book. In fact, I can't remember if you told it to me or if I cite it from somewhere else, but you once compared the research that goes into doxxing unmasking Nazis to basically investigating your ex's Instagram account, which I thought was an amazing comparison. Because you're basically saying this type of work is accessible if you've done that type of sleuthing.

[Molly Conger]

Which is not something I'm admitting to doing. I'm not nosy about my exes. I'm just saying it is something many women are very good at.

[Christopher Matthias]

Exactly. Yes.

[Molly Conger]

And they don't realize it's a transferable skill.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, exactly.

[Molly Conger]

But for those who don't know, Christopher Matthias has been covering the far right for more than a Decade, right, yeah, yeah. You were with Huffington Post for a long time and you've been independent for a couple of years.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, so I was at HuffPost for, like, almost 14 years, and about 10 of those. I know, it's wild. And 10 of those years I was covering the far right, which is how I ended up in Charlottesville in 2017 for Unite the Right rally, which is something Molly and I have talked a lot about before. And, yeah, after I got back from Charlottesville, my editor at the time was like, this is your beat now, covering the far right. So I was kind of like among this initial crew of digital media journalists who suddenly found themselves on the right wing extremism beat. And pretty quickly I realized while I was trying to unmask people in the far right that there were already people doing that work and they were anti fascist activists.

[Molly Conger]

Yeah. And so to prepare for today, I listened to a couple of interviews you've done about the book so far. It comes out first week of February.

[Christopher Matthias]

February 3rd. Yeah, we're close. Yeah. Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

I was listening to those interviews and I was thinking about, you know, this is a different audience. Like, you don't need to explain to people who listen to. It could happen here what Antifa is or what doxing is.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes.

[Molly Conger]

But I think the book very delicately and unapologetically explains those things to people who might be afraid of them.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah. I mean, that was the entire intent of the book. And I'm so glad you picked up on that. You know, I think I kind of imagined writing this book for my parents, for like a kind of, you know, boomer liberals, if you will, or centrists and other people just, I think that have a lot of misapprehensions about Antifa, Understandably. And, you know, the kind of. The goal of the book was to demystify what Antifa is, explain it to a wider audience, and to make kind of more radical politics that Antifa represents more palatable to a wider audience. And the way I tried to do that was to make the book a bit of a thriller so that was accessible and make it into, like, a spy narrative. And I'm hoping that the very kind of average reader will be able to dive into this and come out understanding more radical leftist politics that maybe wasn't accessible to them before.

[Molly Conger]

That's such a hard needle to thread because, like, I could give this book to my dad.

[Christopher Matthias]

Right, Right.

[Molly Conger]

But I also enjoyed reading it.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yay.

[Molly Conger]

Good for the listener. You should go out and get this. It's not just for your dads. You will like it, too. The cold open. Right? Like, the introductory chapter starts sort of in Media Res with your framework of the book. Right. This Vincent Washington, this infiltrator inside Patriot Front.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

And the thing is, I know about Vincent Washington.

[Christopher Matthias]

Right.

[Molly Conger]

I read the leaks that Vincent was responsible for. I was actually the one who told Thomas Rousseau in person about the leak.

[Christopher Matthias]

What? I didn't know that.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, yes. For the listener, Vincent Washington is not a real person. Kelly is a real person, but that's not his real name. Yes, Right. It was. So within Patriot Front, they all get a pseudonym and then their last name is like their state. So Vincent Washington was a man whose name is not Vincent, who might be from Washington, and he infiltrated Patriot Front and he leaked all of their rocket chats. And the day that leak was published, it was January 20th, 21st, 2022 was the day of the March for Life.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes.

[Molly Conger]

So Patriot Front was in Washington, D.C. and I had a suspicion that Patriot Front would be there. They don't announce that kind of thing ahead of time, but I was pretty sure they were gonna be there. So I went to Washington D.C. and we were standing outside the National Archives, and Thomas Rousseau had his little bullhorn. He had, like 20 or 30 guys and little matching fits. And they were so tickled with themselves. They were so tickled, people were just falling all over themselves because these, like, scary Nazis were on the street. And I actually, I have a video. I'll embed it in the final.

[Christopher Matthias]

Oh, my God. Molly.

[Molly Conger]

Hey, guys. Your Rocket Chat just got leaked on DDoS secrets. Unicorn Riot just dropped. Your Rocket Chat, everything, all your DMs, all your DMs, the metadata attached.

[Christopher Matthias]

Why do you have your shield up? No one is going to hurt you. We're just gonna make fun of you.

[Molly Conger]

The videos that you send your network leaders, those all have metadata and unicorn. Riot is posting them right now.

[Christopher Matthias]

Holy shit. Molly. How did I not ask you about this for the book? I could have put this in there. Oh, my God. It was incredible.

[Molly Conger]

Because, you know, Thomas Rousseau later was like, oh, it's like, not a big deal. He looked scared.

[Christopher Matthias]

Oh, my God, he looked scared. Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

So, like, I know about Vincent, but seeing the story from his side of things was so different. Right? Like, I use these leaks all the time, but I, you know, never get to know about the leaker.

[Christopher Matthias]

Oh, my God. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. So again, this is kind of my goal for the book, was that these kind of antifascist spies and I feel like most Americans don't know that Antifa had so many spies over the last 10 years that were infiltrating these groups. You know, they were the hidden hand behind thousands of news stories because they collected all of this invaluable intelligence. Hundreds and hundreds of gigabytes of private messages that these white supremacists were sending to each other, which then were posted on a database on Unicorn Riot, which wonderful researchers like yourself and other people used to mine for clues and details that they could use to identify all of these previously pseudonymous Nazis. So for example, you know, and I wish I could have seen the look on Thomas's face. I can't wait to see that video. But yeah, I mean, like they released, I believe it was like 400 gigabytes worth of Rocket Chat messages and you know, videos and photos and stuff.

[Molly Conger]

With metadata still attached to them.

[Christopher Matthias]

Exactly, with metadata still attached to them, which we'll get to in a second by the way. There's a good story about the metadata, but you know, ultimately that data would contribute to Doxxing unmasking, I think about 80 members of Patriot Front, which is just remarkable. And I think, you know, part of the story I was trying to tell was that these anonymous antifascists who are doing this work, you know, anonymously, like they're not doing it for acclaim or glory, they're doing it because they see it as a form of community self defense. And what they were doing, I think outstripped the efforts of major media, news organizations, academic institutions, civil rights organizations, oh, no doubt. Law enforcement, definitely. They were doing more work to destabilize and destroy far right groups than I would argue, really anyone else.

[Molly Conger]

And then the subsequent work that builds off of that by civil rights groups filing these large Klan act lawsuits. Those lawsuits don't exist without these leaks. Signs v. Kessler doesn't exist without these leaks. The three lawsuits against Patriot Front don't exist without these leaks.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, exactly.

[Molly Conger]

And I've been thinking a lot about this this week, right, because it was the anniversary of Richard Spencer getting punched in the face five years ago.

[Christopher Matthias]

Happy anniversary.

[Molly Conger]

Happy anniversary to those who celebrate. And that was a beautiful moment. And I think we can all agree that it's so funny to watch Richard Spencer get punched in the face. But every year you see people say, and that's what stopped him. And he was never heard from again. And he shut up forever after that.

[Christopher Matthias]

Right?

[Molly Conger]

And that's not true.

[Christopher Matthias]

That's not true at all.

[Molly Conger]

Like I love the guy that punched him in the face, but that didn't end it.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, exactly.

[Molly Conger]

An infiltrator did.

[Christopher Matthias]

An infiltrator did. And I think again, you know, kind of the goal of the book is that most Antifa in the public imagination is most often associated with Nazi punching. And, you know, for good reason. Like, most people learned about Antifa in 2017 from videos, like the video of Richard Spencer getting punched. It's so interesting to look back and realize that no one in America knew what the fuck Antifa was before 2017. And then by the end of that year, everyone had heard that word or knew that word.

[Molly Conger]

It was the boogeyman.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, it was the boogeyman and it was added to the Webster Dictionary. Oxford Dictionary shortlisted it for word of the year. Like, it's a remarkable climb for, you know, a piece of language, a word. But the viral videos that catapulted that word into the lexicon kind of obscured the bulk of the work that Antifa was doing, which was espionage and intelligence gathering and kind of the creation of this remarkable underground informal intelligence agency that just completely fucked up so many fascist groups. And, you know, at the end of 2017, Spencer famously said, antifa is winning. And he was referring not only to getting punched everywhere he went, but to these very efforts to identify all of his followers who knew that if their Nazism was public, they wouldn't be able to like, operate in public life, they wouldn't be able to hold down a job and so on and so forth.

[Molly Conger]

Because I guess both the Nazi punching and the Nazi doxxing, they are different means to a similar end, which is to enact a consequence, right? So that if you're going to be a Nazi in public, there's going to be a fucking consequence. Whether that means you get decked in the jaw or it means all of your neighbors know what you said online, your mom knows what you said online. Like people know who you are.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, exactly. The way I always describe it is the digital equivalent of ripping the white hood off of a Klansman. You know, back in the 80s and 90s, anti racist activists with groups like Anti Racist Action would post flyers in neighborhoods that said, meet your local Nazi.

[Molly Conger]

Right?

[Christopher Matthias]

And what they were doing was not only warning the community that that guy down the block is liable to commit violence against people you know and love, but like you were getting at, they were creating a social cost for being a fascist. They're basically leveraging an existing societal taboo against explicit white supremacy and fascism to ensure a consequence. It basically says, it tells people, if you're going to join one of these groups we're going to name and shame you. You're going to lose your job, your girlfriend's going to dump you, you might lose your apartment, your family, you know, might not want to talk to you anymore. Like, you're going to be a pariah. And I think it was really effective. I mean, you know, obviously the animating question of my book, of course, is what happens when that taboo starts to disappear.

[Molly Conger]

But it's not gone yet.

[Christopher Matthias]

It's not gone.

[Molly Conger]

Some of the other interviews I was looking at, people are saying, well, is there value in this anymore? Because you can work for the State Department and be a Nazi now.

[Christopher Matthias]

Right.

[Molly Conger]

You can do the White House social media and be a Nazi now. Like, is there still any value in this? And I think the answer is obviously, yes. Yeah, they wouldn't wear masks if they didn't have to wear masks.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, right.

[Molly Conger]

Like, some of them are mask off, quote unquote, but like, not all of them. Patriot Front still marches in masks. ICE agents still abduct children in masks. They're covering their faces because they know what they're doing is wrong.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, exactly. And I think it's also as much of a mask off moment as we might be living in. In some ways, you know, this act of research and identifying the threat is still so important because it's, you know, preserving that societal taboo. It's still saying that that social cost is something we still want to preserve. And it is, I think, very interesting that the anti fascist work now is kind of pivoting towards identifying ICE agents and maga. And the Trump administration is horrified of this tactic of identifying ICE agents. And for good reason, because the story I try to tell in my book, this tactic played a really big part in, in destroying fascist groups. They know that it could destroy their ethnic cleansing project. And when you look at the polls since Renee Goode, the favorability for ICE has just plummeted and the support for slogans like Abolish ICE have skyrocketed. So that societal taboo against kind of white supremacism that's being displayed by ICE is definitely still there.

[Molly Conger]

And you ground this sort of in the history too, in the book, in the chapter about sort of the history of unmasking, whether that's with digital doxxing or, you know, identifying members of the Klan. There was still a social cost to being identified as a klansman in the 1920s. Yeah, like there was. There was no social taboo against being racist in the 20s, but there was a social cost to being identified as a Klansman. And I think we're. We find ourselves in the same unfortunate place.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, totally. I mean, and honestly, that was one of my favorite parts about researching the book was diving into the efforts to unmask the clans. Obviously, there were efforts to unmask the first clan. But, you know, one of my favorite stories about unmasking the second clan took place in Buffalo, New York. And there was actually a very large clan chapter in Buffalo. You know, the second clan wasn't confined to the South. It was everywhere. It was in the Northeast and the Midwest. Right. And it was animated not only by anti black racism and anti Semitism, but also by anti Catholicism. They were really angry at this new wave of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe.

[Molly Conger]

They didn't allow Catholics in until the 70s. They had to have a big summit about it.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, yeah, yeah.

[Molly Conger]

When they decided that Catholics are white.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, exactly. And this is a man. It's just, it's so much to unpack because, like, obviously, like, my family's Catholic and I enjoy all of the privilege of being white, but like, you know, back then, like, you know, Catholics were, you know, this other.

[Molly Conger]

You had a dual loyalty to this mysterious king.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, exactly. So at any rate, the Klan in Buffalo is really big. And, you know, one night they even have this elaborate cross burning ceremony where 800 people take the oath for the clan. The mayor of Buffalo, though, is Catholic and forms a coalition with black Buffalonians and Jewish Buffalonians. And the mayor ends up enlisting a spy to go undercover into the Klan. One night, the Klan's secret headquarters in Buffalo are ransacked, broken into and ransacked. And suddenly this list of the clan's membership ends up in the hands of the mayor. The mayor makes some, like, deft denials of any involvement, but says that he's going to post the list downtown. The list is posted downtown. So many people show up to look at the list to see who among their neighbors is in the clan that they end up having to move the list, I believe, to a warehouse to fit all the people so that they could form a line. And then in the ensuing weeks and months, Klan owned businesses are boycotted and vandalized. Klansmen turn up to their jobs only to learn that they've been fired.

[Molly Conger]

Good.

[Christopher Matthias]

And before long, the Klan just completely falls apart. And interestingly enough, Klan headquarters down in Georgia heard about what was happening in Buffalo and was really alarmed by it. So they send an investigator to Buffalo to figure out who the spy is. They figure out who the spy is and they get in a shootout and they both die.

[Molly Conger]

Jesus Christ.

[Christopher Matthias]

Which, like underscores, you know, the stakes of this work sometime. Right.

[Molly Conger]

Which is why, you know, the Richard Spencer puncher and the infiltrators, they do their best to stay anonymous because the stakes are lethal. Yeah, right. Like they will, they will kill you back.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes.

[Molly Conger]

These organizations can't survive sunshine. And they're so aware of that that, yeah, people have been killed for this.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, absolute.

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[Molly Conger]

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[Christopher Matthias]

You and I have both faced our share of harassment and stuff, but there's older tales of, you know, anti racist action. Back in the 90s, two of its members, you know, anti racist skinheads, were in Nevada, lured out to the desert by Nazis under false pretenses and executed in the desert.

[Molly Conger]

It's fourth of July weekend, right? Yes, we still honor them on the fourth of July.

[Christopher Matthias]

Exactly. Yeah. Their names are escaping me right now.

[Molly Conger]

Spit Newborn and Daniel Shirsty.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes. And there is a fantastic Orlando weekly feature article about, I Believe Spit that I think is one of the best pieces I've read in a long time that maybe we can put in the notes I think people would really enjoy.

[Molly Conger]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Christopher Matthias]

And then there's more recent examples of that too. Over the last five years, there was three members of the base, which is like a neo Nazi organization, obviously. I love that your listeners know all this, by the way.

[Molly Conger]

No, but they could use the recap.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, yeah, but know who these groups are at least. But they were arrested for conspiring to kidnap and murder two anti fascist activists in Georgia.

[Molly Conger]

It was a couple living in a kind of remote area, and they had a very detailed plan to burn down their home and like, kill. Kill them in their beds and kill their pets. And I mean, it was.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

If not for the FBI agent who was their friend.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, yeah.

[Molly Conger]

That couple would have been killed.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah. No, it's, it's. It's really wild to consider.

[Molly Conger]

The FBI agent was friends with the Nazis. I should clarify. There is almost always an FBI agent who is friends with the Nazi. Yes. And like, that's. That's the important thing. Right. You know, like these anti fascists are infiltrating these groups, and so is the FBI. Right. Like a lot of these hate groups, somebody is either a paid informant, a freelance informant, or an actual undercover agent. And that's great, I guess, but a lot of times they will prioritize keeping their agent undercover over using the information to protect anyone.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes.

[Molly Conger]

And when we do it, when anti fascists do that, we are invested in protecting our communities, not building a case.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, exactly.

[Molly Conger]

You don't need to take this to a grand jury. You don't need to keep a guy in there for 20 years waiting for the big fish. You're protecting a community.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes. I mean, there's an example of that in the book. There was a kind of this white whale in anti fascist circles that people were trying to identify. And he was a leader in the bow patrol, which, of course is this community of Nazis that praises mass shooters and tries to encourage other Nazis to commit mass shootings. And he was eventually identified as this guy named Andrew Casseray in Sacramento, California.

[Molly Conger]

I remember Vic.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah. And his pseudonym was Vic Mackie. Yeah. And anti fascist identified him. I published a story at HuffPost. It emerges later that Andrew Cassaren was already on, like, the no Fly List.

[Molly Conger]

Yes. Which means the government already knew who that fucking man was when he was. He was recording a podcast about shooting me in my womb through my vagina.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes. Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

And the government already knew who he was.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes. And. Which is just insane. And, you know, and they'll claim it's like investigative secrecy, like some kind of pragmatism, but it's like, for what? Like they're posing an urgent threat.

[Molly Conger]

For one thing. I. I felt safer, and I was safer once I knew who he was. Once someone did the work of identifying that man, and I could say with certainty, he is in California, he is not near me. I was safer.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes.

[Molly Conger]

And like anti fascists gave me that. The government did not give me that. The government would never have given me that.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, exactly. And I think it's also, you know, obviously, you know, a big tenet of militant anti fascism is that you don't trust law enforcement or the state in this fight. And, and not only for the reasons we're describing now, but there's this historical irony in when the FBI or law enforcement in general infiltrates white supremacist groups, they end up finding a bunch of their buddies in these white supremacist groups. They end up identifying a lot of police officers. And I think it just goes to show the ways in which obviously law enforcement and white supremacist groups often share similar goals.

[Molly Conger]

Very much so. And sometimes once they have a guy in there, I mean, I'm sure it happens still to this day. We don't have the records of it happening now, but we have the sort of 60s and 70s era COINTELPRO records now that do show that, you know, they had tons of FBI agents infiltrating the Klan, allegedly to disrupt the Klan. But that's not what they were doing. They were steering the Klan into disrupting the civil rights movement.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, yes, but I mean, most famously the Greensboro massacre where, you know, the Klan and other white supremacists murdered some antifascist communist activists. And then it emerged afterwards that an FBI agent was in the group but didn't report kind of their plans for.

[Molly Conger]

Violence over and over again. Yeah, and those five people died for it.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, exactly.

[Molly Conger]

Which is why I will always trust an anti fascist infiltrator over an FBI agent.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes.

[Molly Conger]

I loved the historical parallels. Right. You know, so you take doxing all the way back to the second Klan. You know, this outside agitator narrative is not new. It's something Martin Luther King Jr. Wrote about. We're seeing that now. Right. Like, oh, you know, these people protesting, they're outside agitators. This isn't the real community. The real community wouldn't behave like this. It's the same as it ever was. Right?

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I think, you know, since antifa kind of exploded into the American consciousness, MAGA and the right seized on antifa as a boogeyman and they trusted that kind of liberals and centrists were going to throw antifa under the bus. Right. That like they weren't going to come to antifa's defense necessarily or even acknowledge a lot of times that antifa existed. And you know, that allowed them to create this boogeyman of like epic proportions. So like in 2017, after Charlottesville, a synonymous pro Trump troll called Microchip starts a petition to declare Antifa a, quote, domestic terrorist organization. This petition goes viral, gets like 300,000 signees, and microchip ends up giving an interview to Politico where he's very upfront and frank about why he's doing this. And it's not because the White House is actually going to declare Antifa a domestic terrorist organization.

[Molly Conger]

Oops.

[Christopher Matthias]

Oops. There's no federal domestic terrorist statute to even do that. Antifa is not an organization. He's very explicit to say, I'm doing this to set up Antifa as a punching bag and to deflect and distract from the far right's very real violence.

[Molly Conger]

Pretty wild that. He said it.

[Christopher Matthias]

He just. He just said it. Yeah, yeah. And it's like that. He admitted it. Meme.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, my God. He admitted it.

[Christopher Matthias]

He admitted. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, over the next few months, every time there's a mass shooting, you have folks like Jack Posobec and other kind of disinformation artists jumping in when, you know, there's not a lot of information yet to blame these mass shootings on Antifa.

[Molly Conger]

I mean, there's a weird troll who still thinks I'm responsible for January 6th.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, yes, exactly. Very impressive work, by the way. You know, so they're using Antifa that way to, like, distract and deflect. They're blaming Antifa for wildfires and train derailments and all this crazy shit. And then there's a little bit of a wall. And then in 2020, the George Floyd uprisings happen. And the George Floyd uprisings are one of the biggest mass uprisings in American history. It's completely grassroots and organic, and it is led by black protesters in their communities, inspired by uprisings again in Minneapolis.

[Molly Conger]

It's too soon for history to be repeating.

[Christopher Matthias]

I know, it's really crazy. But the Antifa boogeyman now is repurposed as kind of this outside agitators trope on steroids. Right. So Trump and all these MAGA influencers rush to blame Antifa for fomenting these mass uprisings, which is absurd. Yeah, sure. And Antifa activists were at these uprisings, but they weren't instigating them, nor would they have the organizing power to instigate such a massive uprising like that. When the right is doing this, it's an effort to make these uprisings seem artificial or kind of astroturfed.

[Molly Conger]

Something you can dismiss.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, something you can dismiss as inorganic and artificial. And it's a way of Distracting from the very real grievance at the heart of these demonstrations, which is that we want cops to stop killing black people. So throughout the summer of 2020, the antifa panic reaches like absurd levels where there are rumors, viral rumors of busloads of antifa roaming the countryside looking to burn down white businesses. Again, antifa's blame for wildfires in the West. All of a sudden you get these paramilitary groups, militia groups out west using these antifa rumors as a pretext to literally occupy towns, entire towns. You know, you have 40 white dudes in full camo and vests, carrying big guns, patrolling the streets, on the lookout for this antifa menace. There's a story about in Sandpoint, Idaho, which is this gorgeous town in the panhandle, and these group of high school kids go on a Black Lives Matter march across a bridge, and all of a sudden they're being followed by these middle aged white dudes carrying AR15s and calling them racial slurs.

[Molly Conger]

Jesus Christ.

[Christopher Matthias]

So basically, the Antifa Boogeyman in 2020 is repackaged again, not only to sow division on the left and to create this outside agitators narrative, but to create this pretext for vigilante violence. And there was a lot of vigilante violence that occurred in 2020. Of course, now we're in 2026. And we saw throughout last year as well, the antifa boogeyman again is being summoned to call whoever opposes the Trump regime's effort to ethnically cleanse the United States. You know, domestic terrorists.

[Molly Conger]

Right. The enemy is simultaneously very weak and very strong in their minds. Right. Like we're all a bunch of soy boys who live in our mom's basements, but we are also a massive, networked, armed organization with unlimited funding.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, exactly, exactly. And, you know, obviously Trump claimed to formally designate Antifa a domestic terror group in September.

[Molly Conger]

Doesn't mean anything. He did say it.

[Christopher Matthias]

He did say it. And then he held a antifa roundtable at the White House with a lot of our friends, Andy Ngo, Jack Posovic. But, you know, as farcical as it all is, it's also deeply dangerous and alarming. In September, Trump designates Antifa a domestic terror group. And then last month, they murder Renee Goode in cold blood. And what do they do? They call her domestic terrorist after the fact. That.

[Molly Conger]

Exactly. It's pretext.

[Christopher Matthias]

It's all pretext.

[Molly Conger]

Because if you create this sort of shadowy network of unidentified agitators who are responsible for unspecified but very bad crimes, you can kill anyone and say it Was them.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, exactly. I wrote a piece for the Nation recently about how there's a tendency in response to like this escalating maga hysteria about antifa. There's a tendency among liberals and centrists to dismiss antifa as not existing, to alternately say that it's not even a thing, or to say, well, antifa just means anti fascist. So we're all antifa. But like, to me, that entirely. And this is the point. Like a, like antifa is real and it refers to a very real subculture and a very real tradition, militant tradition of anti fascist organizing. And if liberals and centrists can't acknowledge that antifa is real and come to their defense, then, you know, the people doing this work might be in some danger. And I think it's important to show them some solidarity right now.

[Molly Conger]

It's such a complicated reality. Right. Because it's not a group. Yeah, but it is. It's also. It's a thousand different groups, groups of two or three or ten. It's not like a nationwide membership organization. You know, it is just an idea, but it's also a history, a set of tactics.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes.

[Molly Conger]

It's. It's all of those things and it's none of those things. And it's different depending on who you ask and why you're asking.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, exactly. And like, anyone can do it, you know, like.

[Molly Conger]

Right.

[Christopher Matthias]

Like anyone can take up the mantle of like militant anti fascist work.

[Molly Conger]

A lot of people are doing it on their own.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah. And I think, like, that's what's been so kind of inspiring to me about Minneapolis and the uprisings. Right. Is, you know, everything that community is doing right now is a grassroots, organic response, and they're doing it because no one else is going to do it for them.

[Molly Conger]

Yeah.

[Christopher Matthias]

There's this axiom that we talk about a lot in anti fascist spaces and anarchist spaces and black liberation movements. You know, this axiom of. Of we protect us. And you know, that is on very big display right now in Minneapolis where you have people doing what antifascist activists were doing to Nazis in 2017, which is monitoring them, following them, disrupting them. They are figuring out where they are staying, where they're eating, and pressuring those businesses and those hotels not to serve them. They are showing up outside their hotels doing noise demos. They are identifying them. Yeah, yeah.

[Molly Conger]

And I think, you know, we protect us is such a, you know, it's such a short, pithy phrase, but you don't know what it means until you feel it.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, right.

[Molly Conger]

Like I Think in Minneapolis, people are feeling it, they're protecting each other. Right. You know, here in Charlottesville, after unite the right, you know, when local authority figures were saying things about antifa, you would have, you know, white grandmas get up there and say, don't you say that about antifa.

[Christopher Matthias]

Right.

[Molly Conger]

Don't you say that about antifa. You know, it was a word I didn't know a month ago, but they saved my life.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, right.

[Molly Conger]

That once you have experienced that kind of community solidarity that, that we protect us ethos, once you've seen it, you know what it means.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, exactly.

[Molly Conger]

And, and nobody's going to tell you different.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah. And, and like, you know, it's also, it's just so clear in Minneapolis that like the Democratic party and you know, law enforcement, the local police are not doing anything, you know, like they're, they're not there.

[Molly Conger]

The people that are supposed to protect you aren't going to, aren't going to. The police will watch you get beaten in the street.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, yes, exactly.

[Molly Conger]

And your senator, your senator will say nothing when the President calls you a terrorist.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes. And, and so, you know, I think it just kind of goes to show that this kind of militant anti fascist tradition is, it's an organic response to, to conditions. It is like an insurgent form of community self defense. As, as horrifying as the footage coming out of Minneapolis is, especially that photo this week of the five year old God being detained, which I can't get out of my head and which makes my blood, blood boil thinking of it.

[Molly Conger]

I can't cry on the recording.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, no, it makes me want to cry.

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[Molly Conger]

Something really struck me reading the book, you know, I was saying like, you know, I read Vincent Washington's leaks, but I didn't know anything about Vincent. You said that he told you he was moved to start taking this kind of militant action by the Portland Max train stabbing.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

I mean that stopped me in my tracks.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah. You know, and I think one of the More moving parts of researching this book was realizing that all of the anti fascists doing this work had brushes with fascist violence in their communities. And that's what inspired them to do it. You know, Vincent was in Portland in 20. What year was that?

[Molly Conger]

It was May 2017.

[Christopher Matthias]

May 2017, right. And he gets on a train at Hollywood station in Portland, goes to a friend's place, has a good time, and then later reads the news and realizes that had he taken one train before his, that left about a minute before, he could have been in this car where this white supremacist named Jeremy Christian started harassing two black Muslim girls. He is haranguing them, telling them to get out of America, when three men intervene. Jeremy Christian slashes the throats of the three men and two of them die. All right, God, we're going to get emotional on this, but one of the last.

[Molly Conger]

This one really, really gets to me. I've sort of brushed up against the story in a couple of things I've written. And I mean, it's one of the most moving encounters of all of these sort of moving pieces. Right. A Nazi committing violence against a Somali immigrant. Right. That's so relevant today. Ordinary people intervening. Only one of them was sort of an active anti fascist in his community, the young man that survived, Micah Fletcher. The other two were just everyday dudes. Everyday dudes. They didn't have anti fascist politics, but they saw a Nazi threatening a little girl.

[Christopher Matthias]

They saw a Nazi threatening a little girl and they lost their lives. And as one of them, and I'm blanking on his name right now, it's Taliesian. Yeah. Was lying, bleeding out, he said, tell everyone on this train I love them. So I actually flew to Portland a few days later and ended up interviewing his girlfriend.

[Molly Conger]

Oh my God.

[Christopher Matthias]

Who kept a journal of their relationship and read me passages from it and like, you know, how beautiful their relationship was. They had just moved in together, they were growing a garden together. And before he left that morning to get on that train, he said something really wonderful, just about how much he loved her. So, you know, basically his day started and ended with these expressions of love.

[Molly Conger]

That always really wrecks me.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, yeah, me too.

[Molly Conger]

But seeing that, that was sort of, you know, as someone who got into this work after seeing what happened. Where I live.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, exactly.

[Molly Conger]

It was very striking to me that, you know, it was the same for Vincent. It was something that he was not involved in. He didn't witness this stabbing, but he was so close to it. It felt so intimate to him. And he felt like, well, I have to do something.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, exactly. And there were so many other examples that I name in the book of these really horrendous hate crimes taking place in Portland and Seattle and across the Pacific Northwest, which, you know, historically has been a hub for white supremacist organizing. So, you know, for Vincent, the threat felt very real to people he knew and loved, which is why he decided to go undercover into Patriot Front. And to fuck up Patriot Front. He had done some other anti fascist work before that, like kind of monitoring the Proud Boys. But then I think when the Proud Boys were on a bit of a decline after January 6, he started to look at groups that operated more in the dark and were more secretive and he decided to focus on Patriot Front.

[Molly Conger]

And how prescient at that time. I mean, patriot front in 2017 first didn't exist in early 2017, but sort of as they rebranded into 2018 from Vanguard America. I mean, how prescient of him to know that that would be the place to go.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, no, totally like that. That's where I think the energy was and like kind of the anonymous organizing was, was going and you know, and what he did was really remarkable. I think a lot, a lot of anti fascist infiltrations and spy work is done online. You know, people just creating a username and an avatar and they, they can manage to do most of the espionage from behind a computer screen. You know, one of the more significant acts of espionage during this era is a guy that goes undercover into Identity Europa and again manages to get reams and reams of their private messages which end up on Unicorn Riot.

[Molly Conger]

And that destroyed them too.

[Christopher Matthias]

Destroyed them. And you know, those messages, the Panic in the Discord database ends up identifying 100 Nazis in identity Europa, which is just remarkable. The anti fascist spy that did this, I talked to and he just had to do an interview with an Identity Europa leader to get into the group. And I got to listen to that recording and it's remarkable. But, you know, after that he didn't have to do that much in person, you know, method acting to pretend to be a Nazi. Vincent, however did he, you know, for.

[Molly Conger]

Five months he was going hiking.

[Christopher Matthias]

He was going hiking, man. Like, because Patriot Front requires you to go on missions and hikes and, you know, kind of group activities, he had to do shit in person. So like this dude was acting like deserves an Oscar, you know. So he climbed Mount Rainier for two nights with 13 other Nazis.

[Molly Conger]

Oh my God.

[Christopher Matthias]

And by the way, at this point had earned the trust of his local chapter so much that he was named the official photographer and videographer for the chapter. Which is just delicious.

[Molly Conger]

They're so smart. I mean, it's like. It's like that Simpson spirit, Right? Like videotaping this crime spree was the best idea we ever take video of everything they do.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes.

[Molly Conger]

And then because of these leaks, we see that in several lawsuits against Patriot Front. Right. Like they are recording video as they, you know, vandalized civil rights monuments and things like that. And then they got sued in three places.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes. And it's. It's basically the Stringer Bell. Like, are you taking notes on a criminal conspiracy? You know me. Yeah, they are and they are. So, you know, eventually all this data that Vincent collects. And by the way, so he's in the group for about five months. He's scheduled to go to their big march in D.C. but at the last minute claims he can't because the FBI knocks on his door. That's a lie. He's just doing that to scare Patriot Front. When Patriot Front gets to DC and goes on their march, some anti fascists in DC know their plans and they know where they are parking their vehicles for this march. They know where Patriot Front is going to march. And let's just say some Nazi cars get redecorated.

[Molly Conger]

Some tires did not make it out of DC that night.

[Christopher Matthias]

Tires did not make it out of dc. Some windshields did not survive. There is some graffiti. Patriot Front gets back to their U Hauls first off that they use to get transported into D.C. from suburban Maryland. Their U Hauls are fucked up. They get back to Maryland finally and to see all their cars fucked up. So you know, there is an act of sabotage. They realize they have an infiltrator. Before long they realize that it's the man they know is Vincent. And I think they think that that's it. Like there'll be a few doxes, but you know, that's it. It didn't seem like he hacked their server. But then of course, a month later, all of their messages end up. End up on Unicorn Riot. You tell Thomas Rousseau the news of this.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, that was such a treat.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah. I can't believe. I can't believe we've never talked about this. And over the course of the next few months, years, so many Patriot Front members are identified. And there's also some other delicious details. Like Vincent, after his infiltration is over, he has all this Patriot Front propaganda material that he kind of took along the way. Banners, pamphlets, shields. So what he does on New Year's is he makes a pyre, towering pyre of this material and lights it on fire. Makes a really beautiful video set to Auld Lang Syne and posted online for Patriot Front to see. And I think kind of warning them that there might be some more coming, some more doxes coming, some more stuff coming. And the thing is, Vincent's story is just one story, One kind of remarkable story of anti fascist spy work over the last 10 years. There are so many other stories that I heard about that for various reasons I couldn't put in the book or there wasn't room for in the book. But it's just. Yeah, I feel very privileged that I got to tell this story that not many people know.

[Molly Conger]

It was such a great framework for the book. Cause it's not just about that particular infiltration, but it sort of provides this running framework, this sort of introduction to the concept. I thought that was very nicely done. I was excited to learn about Vincent because I have only, like I said, read his leaks and then the lawsuits that had inspired. And then the lawsuit against him.

[Christopher Matthias]

Right, yeah.

[Molly Conger]

Which was dismissed last week.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, it was.

[Molly Conger]

Congratulations, Vincent.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, it was. Yes. The book gets into this a little bit, but Patriot Front does end up ascertaining what it believes is Vincent's real identity. And they file a lawsuit in federal court in Washington. And it had been ongoing for the last year or two, but was finally dismissed in court this week. Yeah. Or last week.

[Molly Conger]

So congratulations to the person who may or may not have been Vincent.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, exactly.

[Molly Conger]

We'll never know because it didn't make. It didn't make it to a. I don't think it ever made it to a hearing.

[Christopher Matthias]

No. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Molly Conger]

I know I said I wouldn't take up a ton of your time, but I can't let you go without talking about Redbeard.

[Christopher Matthias]

Oh, my God.

[Molly Conger]

This is the first concrete, confirmed, published docs of Redbeard.

[Christopher Matthias]

Oh, my God. Yeah. I can't believe it's taken us this long to talk about it. Thank you for reminding me.

[Molly Conger]

So, for the listener, you know, we talk about how this is. This is work that is accessible to everyone, but it is not for everyone. And Redbeard is someone I have read so many incorrect doxes of. And that's why it is so important. It's so important to be sure of what you're writing. Because I have read a hundred failed oxes of this man.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

And this one's real.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah. So Redbeard, to those who don't know, again, was kind of this white whale in anti fascist circles. White supremacist whale, basically, in so much as he was one of the men filmed in Charlottesville in 2017 beating DeAndre Harris.

[Molly Conger]

For.

[Christopher Matthias]

For those that don't remember, DeAndre Harris was a black counter protester resident of the Charlottesville area. He was a 19 year old teacher for special ed students. And he ends up in a scuffle with Nazis that are leaving Charlottesville, leaving the rally, and they end up in a parking garage where five of them beat him while he's on the pavement with metal poles and other weapons. And it's captured on camera. I think it's, you know, one of the more distressing things to watch from Charlottesville. I actually happened to be in the garage at the time, was running towards DeAndre when one of the Nazis pulled a gun and started waving it around. So I ducked behind a car. By the time I got up, DeAndre was stumbling away. There was a pool of blood on the pavement.

[Molly Conger]

Wait, I have to go back to the footage. Who was it that pulled the gun?

[Christopher Matthias]

I'm not sure.

[Molly Conger]

Were you over on the police station side of the divider?

[Christopher Matthias]

I. I think I was running.

[Molly Conger]

Pat, I have to go back and find you in the footage. Yeah, I think the guy who pointed a gun at you is Teddy Von Newcombe.

[Christopher Matthias]

Oh, my God. Well, if we could make that idea.

[Molly Conger]

That being because he pulled. Because he pulled the gun.

[Christopher Matthias]

He did.

[Molly Conger]

That means somebody else may have pulled a gun, but Teddy pulled a gun.

[Christopher Matthias]

Okay, I need to look at a photo of Teddy Van Newcombe. It all happened so soon. He said, oh, oh, it's that guy.

[Molly Conger]

Yeah.

[Christopher Matthias]

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Okay. All right, let's talk about this later.

[Molly Conger]

Sorry, Molly here. Recording. After the interview was over, I went back and reviewed that footage and my memory did fail me a little bit here. I was thinking about the right moment. Right after the victim in that beating has sort of broken away from the main portion of the assault and he's running away. The video taken by Unicorn Riot hands over to follow him. And as the camera sweeps across the area on the other side of the parking garage, you can see a Nazi named Turkey. Teddy Von Newcombe. That's his real name. He changed it. He takes a swing at the victim with what looks like a baton. And at the same moment, somebody does pull a handgun, but it's an unidentified man standing right behind Teddy Von Newcombe. I had the image mixed up in my recollection. Sorry about that. Teddy Von Newcombe, as I said in the interview, is Dead. He shot himself in the chest in 2023. The morning he was supposed to go on trial for fentanyl trafficking. I wish I could tell you who the little Nazi with the gun is, but it looks like there's no ID on him. Not yet, anyway. Sorry for the. For the listener. This is something I think Chris and I have Both spent probably 100 hours looking at frame by frame video from 17 angles of this particular assault. Yeah, for a variety of reasons. Right, right. So it was this brutal gang assault on this young black man and four people went to prison for it. Yes, and some people didn't.

[Christopher Matthias]

Some people didn't. And one of them was a, you know, kind of a bigger white dude with a big red beard wearing a baseball cap, who from then on earned the nickname Red Beard. There are all these, like you mentioned, kind of a million.

[Molly Conger]

Just like every fat guy with a red beard on the east coast has been identified as Redbeard.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, exactly. And it was like all these like kind of amateur online sleuths. I think Shaun King was in the mix for this back in the day, trying to ID this guy. No one can find him. A lot of people are falsely identified. The Charlottesville Police Department can't find him. A detective puts out a call for help, but nothing comes in eventually. And where my book kicks off in this story is there's a group of anti fascist researchers called Ignite the Right that is dedicated to identifying every Nazi that turned up in Charlottesville in 2017. And they create a database of all these photos and videos and a list of all the people that have been identified. And the list of names that they are identifying keeps on growing and growing and they're identifying some really crazy names. One of the stories I ended up doing was about a police officer who was working as Richard Spencer's personal.

[Molly Conger]

John Donnelly.

[Christopher Matthias]

John Donnelly, security guard in Charlottesville. So they're doing a lot of really significant oxes like that, but they still can't find Redbeard. Eventually they decide to use facial recognition, which is interesting. You know, obviously I think anti fascists out of principle are opposed to facial recognition software. But I think, you know, you kind of can't show up to a gunfight with a knife kind of situation.

[Molly Conger]

What that's still, I think, is not enough in this case. Right. Because the commercially available facial recognition software that the average non law enforcement person would have access to really struggles with round faces like his and big beards. So he's got a big beard and a hat and his face is very round. And so it's gonna pull a lot of just sort of round faced redheads.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, exactly. And so, like, you know, it's a very important and anti fascist work. A facial recognition hit is never 100%. You have to corroborate it.

[Molly Conger]

It's not enough.

[Christopher Matthias]

So they finally use facial recognition for Redbeard and they get a hit. And the hit is a baby faced, beardless, like 19 year old white dude in a army uniform at a base in Georgia. And he's about to shake the hand of President George W. Bush. And the reason he's photographed for this is because Bush is making a visit to this military base, I believe it's Fort Benning, to announce his troop surge in Iraq.

[Molly Conger]

Incredible.

[Christopher Matthias]

A lot of these people are about to be sent off to his war.

[Molly Conger]

And then he brought the war home.

[Christopher Matthias]

And then he brought the war. Oh, man. Yeah, he brought the war home. And then so the anti fascists zoom in on this photo, but the name tag is Bori. So they can't figure out who Redbeard is yet. To make a long story short, I end up filing a public information request to the George W. Bush Library in Texas.

[Molly Conger]

Right, because they would have had to vet everyone who was there.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes, exactly.

[Molly Conger]

If the President's gonna vet.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah. And you know, my angle on it is that I ask for higher resolution photos. We get the higher resolution photos and zoom in and sure enough, there is his last name, Heilman. Now all we have is the last name. So there's a lot more work to do. These anti fascists go through military yearbooks, they don't find anything. They go through so many social media accounts until eventually one day they see a Facebook account that belongs to a man named Jay Heilman.

[Molly Conger]

It's crazy. He still had Facebook all these years later.

[Christopher Matthias]

Oh, it's wild. And there are photos of him in the military being sent overseas somewhere. And then they take notice of this one particular detail, which is that there's this meme he posts of fucking Tom Hardy from the Dark Knight. And he's saying the fire rises, right? It's that meme of him saying the fire rises. Which of course in like the Dark Knight is supposed to mean, like all this, like, death and destruction is about to commence. Like it's a phrase you hear in fascist circles sometimes kind of as like a half joke. But what was interesting about the meme wasn't so much the meme itself, but where and when Facebook said it was.

[Molly Conger]

Posted, he left the location data on it.

[Christopher Matthias]

He left the location on it. Which was Charlottesville, Virginia, August 12, 2017. So that is how they unlock the identity of Redbeard. You know, there's a lot more to the story in the book, and I think I will be identifying Redbeard in a news story somewhere soon, so look out for that.

[Molly Conger]

I love to hear it. Make Joe Platania answer for his refusal to prosecute.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes. Yes. Yay.

[Molly Conger]

And it's not enough to say the victim doesn't want to cooperate, because you don't need victim cooperation to prosecute malicious wounding in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

[Christopher Matthias]

Sorry, Joe, you heard it here first.

[Molly Conger]

I was hooting and hollering when I got to that part of the book. I can't believe it. Because I had heard. He had heard through the grapevine that the prosecutor was aware of his identity and had chosen not to prosecute. But I didn't know his identity, so. What a thrill.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah. Yeah. It was a real journey. My ex at the time joked that there was a third person in our relationship, and that person was Redbeard. Because I was so obsessed with trying to find him.

[Molly Conger]

I mean, truly, truly a white whale.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

In, I guess, several senses of the word.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, exactly.

[Molly Conger]

But like I said, I promise I wouldn't take up a ton of your time. I'm just so excited about this book, about this story. It's not just for your dad, who doesn't know what Antiva is.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes.

[Molly Conger]

I thought it was thrilling. I learned a lot about some guys I've been thinking about for years.

[Christopher Matthias]

Right. Yeah. That means the world to me, Molly. Thank you. And you also have been such an important voice in these spaces and helping me out over the years, so I appreciate it.

[Molly Conger]

I'm so thrilled. Thank you so much for coming on. People can pre order the book To Catch a the Fight to Expose the Radical Right by Christopher Matthias. You can pre order it now from Simon and Schuster and it comes out February 3rd. Wherever you buy your books, don't buy it at Amazon. I'm going to make sure my local anarchist bookstore has put in an order for it. You should all do the same. What else do you want to plug? Where can people find you online?

[Christopher Matthias]

Yeah, so I'm freelancing these days for different places. Guardian ms, now, the Nation, Slate. So look out for me there. But you can mostly just find me on let's Go Mathias on Bluesky. And I'm still on the Nazi site, but I don't really post there anymore. Let's go with Eyes as well.

[Molly Conger]

Wonderful. And like I said, make sure you pre order that book. It is a fun read. Buy a copy for your dad who's scared of Antifa.

[Christopher Matthias]

Yes please. Thank you so much, Molly.

[Molly Conger]

Thank you. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media.

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[Molly Conger]

Out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.